General Manager of Onward State, student at Penn State.
Can also be found on Twitter.
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Wish List for EditFlow
For the past year or so, Onward State has used a WordPress plugin called EditFlow to add a newsroom style structure to the backend of our website. The plugin gives us the ability to create groups based on role, such as Copy Editors or Sports Writers, and automate notifications when posts are submitted for copy-editing review. It's really been a terrific tool for the organization.
One of the developers noticed the other day when I tweeted:
And responded:
Now the emails I got from EditFlow were in no way an error that resulted from the design of the plugin. They were definitely something I should have predicted and prevented. I was setting up a test server for the launch of Onward State's new design/platform and imported our content archive to populate the database. I had forgotten that EditFlow was enabled on the system and that I had set up a few test accounts with real user account information. So when the posts were processed, automatic email notifications were trigged for each of them.
However, I'm still going to take the opportunity to respond to the developers of my favorite WordPress plugin. Honestly, nothing even begins to replicate the functionality EditFlow creates and I've found it to be an essential tool in imbuing our organization with some print-inspired editorial structure. I'm excited to have the opportunity to weigh in on where it should go in the future.
So, without further ado, here is my wish list for EditFlow:
- Action-triggered email notifications, i.e. send Copy Editors a notification when a post is saved as Pending Review.
- Category-triggered email notifications, i.e. the ability to associate categories with a group of users.
- A better post meta box, namely the ability to set an option "Needs Art" and create a notification that triggers based on that option (so we can let photographers know if a certain post is missing an illustration).
- A better post-by-post discussion system. Comments aren't instantaneous enough for what we do! I remember telling Dan last spring that what I really wanted was automatically created Google Waves for each post... don't think he took me that seriously :)... probably a good call too, seeing as how Google is pulling the plug and all.
Dan, Scott: I hope this helps! Everyone else: start using EditFlow!
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Davis Shaver's Posterous
General Manager of 
Comments 2 Comments
Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
You can be happy to know that the first two items on your wish list are already on our backlog (we don't have enough developers!), and the third I'm currently working on and should be available in September (let me know if you want to beta test - would love someone in newsroom to try it out).
What is it about comments that isn't instantaneous enough? Would adding Ajax auto-refreshing comments make them acceptable? Something like the P2 WordPress theme is what I'm thinking.
-Scott
I should rephrase my point about comments. As Onward State switches to doing more of our work on collaborative platforms like Wave or Yammer, we rely more on stream-based discussions. The limitation with EditFlow comments is that they are only viewable on the post itself or through an email notification. It'd be nice if you could export the stream out as a private RSS feed for extending it into other platforms. My original description of EditFlow comments not being 'instantaneous' enough wasn't the best way to describe this... and as I thought about it more, I realized that the activity stream you guys are developing would probably address my concerns.
Sorry this reply is tardy, classes started at Penn State recently and I've been neglecting this blog.